Snowy Egret (Phoenix Zoo - Arizona Trail)

Snowy Egret

Egretta thula

Summary ⁷

The Snowy Egret (Egretta thula) is a small white heron. It is the American counterpart to the very similar Old World Little Egret, which has established a foothold in the Bahamas.

Distribution ⁸

Global Range: (>2,500,000 square km (greater than 1,000,000 square miles)) BREEDING: northern California, southern Idaho, Kansas, lower Mississippi Valley, and Gulf and Atlantic coasts north to Maine, south through Mexico and the Antilles to South America (to southern Chile and central Argentina). See Spendelow and Patton (1988) for information on the distribution and abundance of coastal U.S. breeding colonies. NON-BREEDING: northern California, southwestern Arizona, Gulf Coast, and South Carolina southward through the breeding range. In the U.S., areas with the highest densities in winter include the Gulf Coast along the Texas-Louisiana border, the mouth of the Mississippi River, the lower Colorado River, and Florida (Root 1988). Wanders irregularly outside usual range; rare straggler to Hawaii.

Iucn red list assessment ⁹

Red List Category

Least Concern

Red List Criteria

Version

3.1

Year Assessed

2012

Assessor/s

BirdLife International

Reviewer/s

Butchart, S. & Symes, A.

Contributor/s

Justification

This species has an extremely large range, and hence does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the range size criterion (Extent of Occurrence <20,000 km2 combined with a declining or fluctuating range size, habitat extent/quality, or population size and a small number of locations or severe fragmentation). The population trend appears to be increasing, and hence the species does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the population trend criterion (>30% decline over ten years or three generations). The population size is very large, and hence does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the population size criterion (<10,000 mature individuals with a continuing decline estimated to be >10% in ten years or three generations, or with a specified population structure). For these reasons the species is evaluated as Least Concern.